In this bold new way of looking at dramatic structure, Jim Linnell establishes the central role of emotional experience in the conception, execution, and reception of plays. "Walking on Fire: The Shaping Force of Emotion in Writing Drama "examines dramatic texts through the lens of human behavior to identify the joining of event and emotion in a narrative, defined by Linnell as emotional form. Effectively building on philosophy, psychology, and critical theory in ways useful to both scholars and practitioners, Linnell unfolds the concept of emotional form as the key to understanding the...

We tell our story as a series of tables set in front of us. From one table setting to another we accumulate knowledge, relationships, mistakes. But we eat because we are hungry. The table set before us doesn't always match our hunger. Every holiday table contains the fault lines of the appetites that drive families, couples, and their ghosts. The poems in The Menu evoke the driven progress of a life. We are creatures of appetite and fear. The debris trail we leave trying to satisfy our hunger is unpredictable, complicated. This tale divides into six sections: It Starts, He, She, She Meets He,...